The Road Less Traveled
by catfoxy
Summary: Driving in L.A. you can see the weirdest things. Especially when you're driving through a neighborhood where a certain team just happens to be conducting a mission. POV / OC


_Author's Note:_

_I was on the road today, and I saw something that inspired me to write another little POV / OC story. Because when you're in a car, the weirdest things can happen. Not just in your car – but also right around you. LOL_

_So, for the sake of this story, meet Jeffrey. He's a normal guy in his late 30s, proud of his normal job at an office, and the only thing not normal in his life at this very moment is the fact that Jeffrey just bought himself a new car. _

_Normally he takes the same route to work every day. But not today. Today, to enjoy his new toy, Jeffrey is taking a little detour … and the poor guy has no idea what he's in for. LOL_

_Summary:_

_Driving in L.A. you can see the weirdest things. Especially when you're driving through a neighborhood where a certain team just happens to be conducting a mission. POV / OC_

**The Road Less Traveled**

A solid 190 horsepower. Shiny blue metallic. New paint, new tires. And all mine now.

Oh yeah. I was happy.

I picked up this baby at the car dealer just last night. Today is the first day I'm driving it to work. Needless to say I left the house about an hour early, so I could give it a test drive around the neighborhood to enjoy my new car a little before work.

With no intention to drive fast, mind you. My goal was to simply _enjoy_ the experience of driving. So, at slightly less than the speed limit, I took the back roads to the office, cruising through some streets that I usually didn't drive along. I normally just took the freeway to work, it was easier. But, seeing these other streets now, I had to admit these neighborhood roads were quite nice, too. That is, if you weren't in a hurry.

Which, today, I wasn't.

So, I enjoyed the experience.

Everything was beautifully quiet; the owners of the rows of family houses on my left and right were obviously all still sleeping. Only some birds were chirping happily in the early morning hours. The sun had just come over the horizon, its pure new light slowly touching everything ahead, bathing the street corners in a touch of gold and the freshness of a brand-new morning. It was enough to make me slow down even more, simply enjoying the moment.

I could easily see the traffic lights of the next crossroad ahead, they were switching from green to yellow, and would soon be going to red, so I just took my foot off the gas, simply letting the car roll to a stop on its own. No need to even tap my new breaks for that. As I came to a stop, I simply let my eyes wander for a moment, once more taking in the amazing beauty of the neighborhood.

And the quiet of the early morning crossroad.

A quiet that came to a unexpected end, when I suddenly saw a man racing up from left to right, running straight across the street before my eyes.

The guy didn't even look up or slow down, but simply ran like his life depended on it.

'Jeez, man, you could get run over sprinting across the road like that,' I thought with a shake of head at the craziness of what I just saw.

As my light was still red, and I was merely sitting there in my car, I was able to keep watching the weird guy for a moment longer, my gaze following him as he ran, until I lost sight of him again after he turned a corner. From the looks of this guy – I made out several ugly scars on his face and a large gang tattoo on his arm – I got a good idea that he was probably one of the more shady characters in this town.

Maybe he was a drug addict beating a hasty retreat from a deal gone bad, or perhaps a dealer of some kind. Maybe even something worse. But since I heard no police sirens nearby, I couldn't be sure. All I knew was that the guy looked like he was in a hurry to be elsewhere.

'Speaking of elsewhere…' I thought, when I looked back at my traffic light, and saw that it was just switching from yellow back to green, signaling me that I was ready to go on. The drug guy wasn't my problem. I was here to enjoy my new car.

I was just getting ready to drop the first gear in when, out of the corner of my left eye, I saw something else move on the edge of my vision. So I looked up. And my eyes barely had time to focus on another man sprinting onto the crossroad, also coming from the left, apparently headed directly after the first guy.

Only MUCH faster.

"What the hell…?"

The neck-breaking speed of that man made my jaw go slack. But it wasn't only the fast speed. This man was also much better dressed than the drug dude from before. I could easily picture this man at a casino. A high-roller, with some impressively good looks to match his good luck. A winner-type.

Someone who apparently didn't care one iota that he was currently high-speed running across an L.A. crossroad in a custom-tailored blue suit and pair of rather expensive-looking shiny black shoes, all of that at 7am in the morning.

'What kind of a combination is that?' I asked myself, just as the man hit the middle of the street – and almost got hit by a car that was coming from the other direction. Unlike me, that other car had begun driving at the green light.

The blue-suit man, and I was rather impressed by his agility, barely had the time to swerve in his run so as to avoid being driven right over by the other car. It was a near thing, but somehow he managed to turn slightly even as he ran, twisting his body just enough to prevent a full impact. Instead, the man used his momentum to haphazardly jump across the hood of the car - which hit the breaks immediately - and from there he was already half-sliding off the hood again, rolling down from the car without even missing a beat.

The entire thing happened so fast, I could barely see his feet touch the ground. But apparently completely unfazed by the entire near-death experience, the man merely stumbled for a second, before he caught his gait.

And then he was off again.

'Whoa.'

I swallowed hard as I realized I had almost watched someone get killed by a car.

I was in a bit of a shock, actually.

Fortunately, that also meant I didn't restart my car immediately, either.

Because just at this moment, a third person came bounding around the same corner, not as fast as either of the two men earlier – but certainly fast enough to make me wonder what on earth could be coming next. Had I missed a memo somewhere? Was this 'scare Jeffrey to death' – day, or something?

Then I realized that this third person racing across the street was actually a woman. And a rather good-looking one at that. That much I could see. There was just one thing I didn't understand. Why wasn't she wearing any shoes?

'Because any shoes that could even remotely match that beautiful dress she is wearing would probably require heels so high it would be impossible to run in them so fast,' I answered my own question only moments later, when my brain caught up with my eyes.

I figured she must have kicked off her shoes at some point before she started running after the drug dude and the other good-looking fellow.

Alright. This was getting weird.

As I watched the lady disappear down the same road like her two predecessors, I decided to forget about restarting my car for the moment – now I wanted to wait and see what would happen next.

And, sure enough, after a moment of quiet…I suddenly heard the screeching of tires. Large tires.

Moments later, I saw a van come screeching around a corner, two of its tires almost lifting off as he took the corner way too fast. After the corner, the driver of the van used both lanes to regain speed.

For a moment, I could see the driver. A rather harmless-looking little guy at the wheel – but his driving style was that of a banshee. Even after he turned the corner, he kept to the entirely wrong lane, like somebody had forgotten to tell him that in L.A. people drove on the right side of the street. Either that or he was simply in too much of a hurry to care at this moment. Maybe it was even a little bit of both.

This was getting better than a Hollywood movie.

My eyes were now riveted to the crossroad, and I was holding my breath.

But I had to eventually start breathing again when, after several long moments, nothing else seemed to be happening. It looked like the show was over after all.

I leaned back in my seat for a moment.

'Just wait 'til I tell this story at the office today' I thought, still a little breathless from the entire experience.

Once more I looked to the left and to the right, just to make sure nobody else was coming. But the view was clear now.

So I started driving again, slowly at first. Onto the crossroad. And – as my office lay in that direction – I then turned right after about three more blocks.

My eyes kept sweeping into the side streets as I drove past them, still not going particularly fast, wondering if I could perhaps spot some of those weird people again.

At the fourth side street I got lucky.

Immediately checking over my shoulder to make sure I wasn't gonna cause an accident, I quickly pulled over at the curb, with a clear view of what was going on about half a block down the alley across from me.

The alley was empty. Except for the drug dude. And one other guy.

That other guy was kneeling on the back of the drug dude. In fact, it looked like the drug dude had been brought to a rather painful fall, and the other guy was now taking his time securing the drug dude on the ground, without even breaking a sweat in his nice, white dress shirt.

I could see the white-shirted guy casually looking up from his catch, as he heard two more people come running towards him from his back. I could see it was the good-looking man and the lady. And, as I continued to watch, a certain grey van also came to a screeching halt just behind the still patiently waiting white-shirted guy. The guy with the British driving technique jumped out of the van at almost the same time as the good-looking man and the lady reached the white-shirted man.

The four of them apparently knew each other.

The drug dude was then bundled up into the van.

The lady was covering him closely now, holding on to his arm with an unmistakable 'don't you dare run away again or you will regret it' look. The crazy van driver then also went back inside the van, returning to the wheel of the vehicle. As the white-shirted man and the other, elegantly dressed man made to follow, the white-shirted guy seemed to get a look from the other man. The look was actually quiet funny to watch, because it seemed to be saying 'care to explain to me how on earth you got here before us?'

Even from afar I could see that the man with the blue suit was more than a bit out of breath. And going by the smirk on the white-shirted man's face, this occurence seemed to be quite amusing.

I tried to squint then, to see what the white-shirted man would answer the good-looking man who seemed to be the boss of this merry little running group.

I was in luck. As long as I really concentrated, I could interpret the movement of the lips, to read what he was saying.

And I couldn't help a snort at the white-shirted man's reply.

In fact, as I watched them all leave, the words from the white-shirted guy still sounded so appropriate to me, that I actually repeated them to myself out loud, as I, too, pulled off the curb to finally drive on to my workplace.

I absolutely agreed with the white-shirted man's words.

There really were times when it paid to take an alternate route.

THE END

_P.S. Feedback is always appreciated. :o)_


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